Routledge Companion to Literature and Science

The Routledge Companion to Literature and Science is about to be published. Details are available on the publishers' website:

With forty-four newly commissioned articles from an international cast of leading scholars,The Routledge Companion to Literature and Science traces the network of connections among literature, science, technology, mathematics, and medicine. Divided into three main sections, this volume:

• Links diverse literatures to scientific disciplines from Artificial Intelligence to Thermodynamics
• Surveys current theoretical and disciplinary approaches from Animal Studies to Semiotics
• Traces the history and culture of literature and science from Greece and Rome to Postmodernism

Ranging from classical origins and modern revolutions to current developments in cultural science studies and the posthumanities, this indispensible volume offers a comprehensive resource for undergraduates, postgraduates, and researchers.
With authoritative, accessible, and succinct treatments of the sciences in their literary dimensions and cultural frameworks, here is the essential guide to this vibrant area of study.

Members of the British Society for Literature and Science are eligible for a discount.

On the Human - online forum

A fairly recent initiative of the National Humanities Center is 'On the Human', an online forum for humanities scholars and scientists to ’share their ideas and research’. A number of eminent scholars in the literature and science field have published essays in the forum, including N. Katherine Hayles (‘Distributing/Disturbing the Chinese Room’) and Joseph Carroll (‘The Adaptive Function of Literature and the Other Arts’), and each is followed by substantial comments from other scholars. The site recently published a new essay on ‘Late Darwin and the Problem of the Human’ by Gillian Beer. Former Science and Literature Reading Group member Katy Price's poetic response to the essay is on her blog here.

"Three Tales" Screening

Adrian will be screening Steve Reich's "Three Tales" on Thursday 8th July at 7.30pm. Contact Melanie if you'd like to come along (space is limited), and for directions.

Royal Society @ 350

Details of the literary events planned as part of the Royal Society's 350th anniversary celebrations on the South Bank next week can be found here. They include appearances by Jocelyn Bell-Burnell and Jamie McKendrick, Gabriel Weston, Adam Foulds and Samantha Harvey, a discussion on science fiction, and a family poetry workshop.

William Henry Fox Talbot: Beyond Photography - Exhibition at Trinity College

William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) is now primarily remembered as a pioneer of photography. Talbot's work, however, extended across the natural sciences, mathematics, classical scholarship and Assyriology. His wide-ranging interests are documented in his vast correspondence with leading Victorian scientists and his non-photographic notebooks, some of which are on display in the Wren Library until 9 July.

The Wren Library is open to visitors from 12.00 until 2.00, Monday to Friday.

Fairy Tale Physics: Myths and Legends Explained

See here for a 2005 National Geographic article about an Australian initiative.

Once upon a time in the land of chemistry...

See here for 'a case for fantasy writing in chemistry'.

Flatland illustrations, and more

Shannon May's illustrations for Flatland, and other art and science images, are online here.

Scientizing the Other: Science, Medicine and the Study of Human Difference, 1800-1950

A one-day international postgraduate student conference to be held at Churchill College, University of Cambridge

Tuesday, 22 June 2010

For the last two hundred years, members of the scientific and medical establishments have represented and misrepresented peoples of different class, sex, race, age and ability in their efforts to chart human variation. This conference will explore how science has been used to evaluate the ‘other’ in society, and will examine the various means by which seemingly objective conclusions were reached concerning whole segments of the population.

Papers given will include:

• Yoshiya Makita (Hitotsubashi University): ‘Institutionalizing the Disabled Other: Social Policy over the ‘Feeble-Minded’ in the United States and Japan and the Turn of the Twentieth Century’
• Amir Teicher (Tel-Aviv University): ‘Identity, Purity and Otherness in the Praxis of Genealogical Tree Formation in Germany, 1900-1936’
• Jenny Bangham (University of Cambridge): ‘The blood groups of the Basques: constructing a new anthropological tool, 1945-1960’
• Christina Wu (Écoles des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales): ‘Diagnosing Passion in the Tropics: ‘Amok’ and Colonial Classification in British Malaya’
• Fenneke Sysling (VU University Amsterdam): ‘Between Data and Experience: Physical Anthropology in the Dutch Indies, 1890s-1920s’
• Jed Foland (University of Oxford): ‘Women’s Colleges and the Pursuit of Eugenics in the United States, 1910-1930’
• Clare Tebutt (University of Manchester): ‘Male/Female/Other: 1930s Intersex Research and its Popular dissemination’
• Howard H. Chiang (Princeton University): ‘How to Do the History of Transsexuality in China’

There will also be a concluding keynote address by Dr. Gavin Schaffer (University of Portsmouth) on the topic 'Racial Science and British Society'

Registration is free and the event begins at 9am

New Fairy Tales - online magazine

See here for further details, and here for the latest issue (#5 - including a contribution by Kelley Swain).